Last year's controversial COICA bill is about to be replaced with the updated …

Surprise! After months in the oven, the soon-to-be-released new version of a major US Internet censorship bill didn't shrink in scope—it got much broader. Under the new proposal, search engines, Internet providers, credit card companies, and ad networks would all have cut off access to foreign "rogue sites"—and such court orders would not be limited to the government. Private rightsholders could go to court and target foreign domains, too.

As for sites which simply change their domain name slightly after being targeted, the new bill will let the government and private parties bring quick action against each new variation.

Get ready for the "PROTECT IP Act."

Targeting Google

A source in Washington provided Ars with a detailed summary of the PROTECT IP Act, which takes its acronym from "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property." This beats the old acronym, COICA; who can be against protection? The actual legislation should be introduced shortly.

The bill is an attempt to deal with foreign sites which can be difficult for US enforcement to reach, even when those sites explicitly target US citizens.

The PROTECT IP Act makes a few major changes to last year's COICA legislation. First, it does provide a more limited definition of sites “dedicated to infringing activities.” The previous definition was criticized as being unworkably vague, and it could have put many legitimate sites at risk.

But what the PROTECT IP Act gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. While the definition of targeted sites is tighter, the remedies against such sites get broader. COICA would have forced credit card companies like MasterCard and Visa to stop doing business with targeted sites, and it would have prevented ad networks from working with such sites. It also suggested a system of DNS blocking to make site nominally more difficult to access.

The PROTECT IP Act adds one more entity to this list: search engines. Last week, when the Department of Homeland Security leaned on Mozilla to remove a Firefox add-on making it simple to bypass domain name seizures, we wondered at the request. After all, the add-on only made it easier to do a simple Google search, and we wondered "what the next logical step in this progression will be: requiring search engines to stop returning results for seized domain names?"

Turns out that's exactly what's being contemplated. According to the detailed summary of the PROTECT IP Act, this addition "responds to concerns raised that search engines are part of the ecosystem that directs Internet user traffic and therefore should be part of the solution."

Rightsholders also score a major victory with the new legislation, which grants them a private right of action—something Google publicly trashed as a terrible idea earlier this year. Copyright and trademark holders don't have to badger the government into targeting sites under the new bill; they are allowed to seek court orders directly, though these orders would only apply to payment processors and advertising networks (not to ISPs or search engines).

Help us out, please

The emphasis here is on forcing intermediaries to get involved in policing such sites. Rightsholders have had difficulty suing the millions of end users engaged in infringement, and they have had difficulty suing the sites themselves when they are based abroad. But MasterCard and Google? Those are easy, US-based targets who will comply will any law Congress passes.

The PROTECT IP Act goes even further than forcing these intermediaries to take action after a court order; it actively encourages them to take unilateral action without any sort of court order at all. The bill summary makes clear that ad networks and payment processors will be protected if they “voluntarily cease doing business with infringing websites, outside of any court ordered action.” If a search engine decides that the next YouTube is a copyright infringer—and rightsholders have often sued sites like Veoh and YouTube in the past—it can simply cut off advertising for that reason and be immunized under the law. So can Visa.

The bill also encourages everyone—domain name registries, search engines, payment processors, and ad networks—to cut off access to infringing sites that "endanger the public health." That is, online pharmacies (which are often hotbeds of counterfeiting).

Given the strong opinionselicited by the earlier COICA, the expansion of powers here is a bit surprising, but the continued presence of the legislation is not. That's because, no matter how much power and money Congress devotes to intellectual property, rightsholders are back every couple of years for more—as the NET Act, DMCA, Sonny Bono Term Extension Act, PRO-IP Act, and Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) remind us. Each is "essential"—but somehow never quite enough.

275 Reader Comments

Lets just take the internet down, clearly its better for IP and the advancement of mankind. I support the idea, but seriously, a private rights option? It's almost as though the corporations who would use a private rights option don't already own our government. I guess this might help take down those aweful world ending gambling websites where people go and spend their free time to enjoy life. Key to this, start using non-us search engines and point out that there is no right for our government to run the worlds communication.

In the sidebar we read that "The US government will throw millions of dollars at the Great Firewall of China to help users get evade its restrictions." and then in this piece we read about how the US is working to assemble its own firewall to protect the big movie studios and record labels.

At least this again confirms who actually runs this country. (Not us) We need to add a clause to that whole "separation of church and state" and make it "separations of church, business, and state" since they have found the vacancy quite comfortable.

It seems like this makes it even harder to break into the search engine market, as if it weren't hard enough already.

But doesn't this just mean that Google/Bing/etc will have to spend the cash to have interfaces with the government requests? Meanwhile, a non-US site will still index the pages? And it's only DNS blocking! Even if the Firefox addon is killed, another form of indirect DNS will appear.

I don't know about Visa/Mastercard, but again the problem can be solved with indirect payments, like Paypal and alternatives.

I probably go against the grain of many here in that I believe that IP is an important aspect of how businesses function. Its a system of checks and balances, that can in some cases get out of whack but for the most part functions as it should.

Outside of the commercial realm, I think IP is far less relevant. Interventionist policies by the government involving IP are beyond contempt. The balance of interests does not favor those who are being represented, only those who are providing massive campaign contributions. Its waste and greed and it will end up increasing the burden on taxpayers to help out a very small minority that is financially capable of taking care of themselves.

1) government becomes aware of infringing site, makes case, gets appropriate order to shut it down approved in court.2) DNS entry yanked, site not strictly accessible by IP address.3) User searches on Google and it returns results listing the site, clicks on it, and HITS THE FBI WELCOME PAGE. Oh, right, because we don't remove it, we redirect it to an FBI server to cache the hits against it, maybe figure out who a few of the heaviest pirates were out of it too.

Search engines return URLs using their DNS names, very very rarely IPs and then only for sites that have no DNS. Make a simpler law: search engines can't crawl or list sites by IP only, and must use DNS. Problem solved, costs averted. Nothing spreads the word faster that a site got knocked down then LETTING people land at that FBI takedown page. LET them find it...

Oh, btw, most common people who actually DO find a link in search results that is an IP only, the default browser settings warn the user that the site may be a virus or hoax, brosers know IPs in web links are 99% of the time bad. Users who know otherwise and are interested in finding the blocked site anyway will easily find reference to the IP its using and bypass the FBI anyway.

Stopping search engines only eliminates the ease of notifying those who seek to access the site just taken down. Instead of a federal warning (including "we're now watching you", you know, that you just tried to go to a pirate web site and all...), they instead get nothing, so they hit a forum and find the IP? bad idea.

Where are all of the piracy apologists who decried "Big Content" using the government as a private police force? Here's your chance to celebrate a private right of action that will vest more of the enforcement responsibility with the rights holders.

@Keithy: Paypal is in play too; as is any US-based payment processor. This bill isn't a silver bullet. Dedicated infringers will still be able to get copyrighted content without paying for it. But it will cut back on casual infringers.

I probably go against the grain of many here in that I believe that IP is an important aspect of how businesses function. Its a system of checks and balances, that can in some cases get out of whack but for the most part functions as it should.

Only part I don't agree with is "for the most part functions as it should", since this is a glaring example of how IP doesn't function correctly. In a broad sense, yes, it is necessary for profit on innovation.

Quote:

Outside of the commercial realm, I think IP is far less relevant. Interventionist policies by the government involving IP are beyond contempt. The balance of interests does not favor those who are being represented, only those who are providing massive campaign contributions. Its waste and greed and it will end up increasing the burden on taxpayers to help out a very small minority that is financially capable of taking care of themselves.

...and history has shown what happens when they wander too far over that line. In general the practice has been about maintaining the "free market" by deregulating, but at the same time regulating the "free people". I would love to see how this helps innovation.

Where are all of the piracy apologists who decried "Big Content" using the government as a private police force? Here's your chance to celebrate a private right of action that will vest more of the enforcement responsibility with the rights holders.

@Keithy: Paypal is in play too; as is any US-based payment processor. This bill isn't a silver bullet. Dedicated infringers will still be able to get copyrighted content without paying for it. But it will cut back on casual infringers.

If we could devote half the firepower from these "ip protection" efforts to fixing our federal debt then this country would be running a trillion dollar budget surplus right now.

It's always good to know that I can count on my elected officials to take action on my behalf. Oh wait, I'm not a billion dollar media company. Well.... Nevermind then.....

Are you kidding? Private industry is footing most of that bill here in the first place, not the USA itself. Enforcing COICA/this-thing is dirt cheap, and the cases that come through the courts pay fees and leave money there. The US court system is one of the few things that runs a profit in this country. Shutting down IPs is a hell of a lot cheaper than prosecuting a tax offender or worse, a business.

Also, piracy does have some impact on retail activity. Not to what the MafiAAs suggests by any stretch, but it is an impact, and that means less tax money, and less industry movement/retail flow. Also, shutting down piracy has helped move forward other avenues for media distribution, and created thousands of jobs in the streaming industry and online services, and by extension thousands more jobs, investment, and network expansion to handle it at ISPs.

And the government actions against piracy, they're token measures. Pacify the RIAA, take their money, pass some relatively weak laws that will rarely be successfully used on a voter, and move on. There's a lot of PRESS about it, but its no great time sink for the politicians.

And yet still, all you people fail to get it; COICA is not about piracy, its about cybersecurity, phishing, hackers, and more. It just happens to ALSO be applicable to piracy, and they're letting the RIAA/etc pay for the costs to put it in place. in reality, though it COULD be used against pirates, it has little real effect there, many of those networks run on dynamic IP and crowd sources nodes that a DNS shutdown has little effect on. A phishing web site, taken offline quickly however is a massive issue averted. People don't click on the IP address to their bank, they click on a DNS name in that phishing e-mail. If there's an IP behind the hyperlink, the browser has tools to warn about that, so taking DNS off the table actually stops some real crimes, and being able to do that quickly for zero day attacks and such is a critical tool for national cybersecurity. Gambling sites, black markets, warez sites, hacker IRC servers, botnet heads, and more rely on DNS so they can quickly relocate servers if an ISP pulls a plug or if systems are seized in a raid. Take DNS away and they have to use fixed IPs which are easy to trace to physical locations making law enforcement easier and hacking more risky. This is what COICA is about. Pirates? it's not actually going to stop a torrent network... DNS takedowns have little effect on things not required to have a web page...

This isn't just a slippery slope, this is outright state-mandated censorship. Just because they're doing it in the name of private entities doesn't mean they're not breaking the First Amendment. How long because government interests begin to get injected into the "banned lists" and free speech is stifled entirely?

If we could devote half the firepower from these "ip protection" efforts to fixing our federal debt then this country would be running a trillion dollar budget surplus right now.

It's always good to know that I can count on my elected officials to take action on my behalf. Oh wait, I'm not a billion dollar media company. Well.... Nevermind then.....

Are you kidding? Private industry is footing most of that bill here in the first place, not the USA itself. Enforcing COICA/this-thing is dirt cheap, and the cases that come through the courts pay fees and leave money there. The US court system is one of the few things that runs a profit in this country. Shutting down IPs is a hell of a lot cheaper than prosecuting a tax offender or worse, a business.

Also, piracy does have some impact on retail activity. Not to what the MafiAAs suggests by any stretch, but it is an impact, and that means less tax money, and less industry movement/retail flow. Also, shutting down piracy has helped move forward other avenues for media distribution, and created thousands of jobs in the streaming industry and online services, and by extension thousands more jobs, investment, and network expansion to handle it at ISPs.

And the government actions against piracy, they're token measures. Pacify the RIAA, take their money, pass some relatively weak laws that will rarely be successfully used on a voter, and move on. There's a lot of PRESS about it, but its no great time sink for the politicians.

And yet still, all you people fail to get it; COICA is not about piracy, its about cybersecurity, phishing, hackers, and more. It just happens to ALSO be applicable to piracy, and they're letting the RIAA/etc pay for the costs to put it in place. in reality, though it COULD be used against pirates, it has little real effect there, many of those networks run on dynamic IP and crowd sources nodes that a DNS shutdown has little effect on. A phishing web site, taken offline quickly however is a massive issue averted. People don't click on the IP address to their bank, they click on a DNS name in that phishing e-mail. If there's an IP behind the hyperlink, the browser has tools to warn about that, so taking DNS off the table actually stops some real crimes, and being able to do that quickly for zero day attacks and such is a critical tool for national cybersecurity. Gambling sites, black markets, warez sites, hacker IRC servers, botnet heads, and more rely on DNS so they can quickly relocate servers if an ISP pulls a plug or if systems are seized in a raid. Take DNS away and they have to use fixed IPs which are easy to trace to physical locations making law enforcement easier and hacking more risky. This is what COICA is about. Pirates? it's not actually going to stop a torrent network... DNS takedowns have little effect on things not required to have a web page...

So by taxmoney that's lost, youre implying that people who are pirating are just throwing this money in a pot somewhere and not spending it? It absolutely does NOT affect tax revinues, it just shifts where it comes in from.

Is there anything one can do to stop this from happening? In other words, who can we contact, and how?

Its going to happen. Give up on stopping it. If you actually understand the intent of the bill, and the limted extent of it's powers, you;de not be fighting it anyway. It;s actually an invaluable tool for government to shut down phishing sites, hacker IRC servers, and botnet nodes. Pirates, they can easily move, and can easily run IP only on distributed networks, and handle IP changes via forum notices on servers COICA can't touch (like facebook). Botnets need home servers, and taking them out ends the bot net. Phishing attacks require a web server on a valid URL (since browsers auto-block/warn when you click a link in an e-mail that points to an IP only resource).

This is a simple tool to let agents get a warrant to change a DNS record. This is similar to the act of arresting someone pre-trial. It can STRICTLY be used on sites that exist for the PURPOSE of conducting illegal activity, and can not be used on sites that have a primary legitimate business purpose (they have to be dealt with the old fashioned way, a regular court order, that takes a few more weeks or months to get). Shutting down sites is a power the government ALREADY HAS, via the courts. This is simply a way to streamline that process when time sensitivity (say stopping a new and large phishing attack) is critical. It's a temporary at best measure, but can minimize the impact of botnets and other attacks. Piracy, it has little effect on piracy.

Making the search engines also block access, it's a minimal impact, since search engines use URLs, which will point at blocked DNS entries anyway. COICA was good legislation to start with, this is more refined and more targeted and less vague, better in every level, except some dumbass didn't realize search engine results are somewhat irrelevent once DNS is already down. (and more to the point, we WANT those trying to access illegal sites to hit a government page. For those following the phishing scam its a wakeup call and probaly will link to info about how not to fall for one next time. For pirate sites, maybe they'll log your IP, show up too many times at too many other shut-down pirate servers and they might notice, but the governemt has clearly been drifting away from prosecuting citizens (common voters) from doing something most of them don;t see as wrong or as victimless crimes, they're simply pacifying the MafiAA on this.

There are legitimate needs to protect IP holders. There are legitimate needs to get rid of shady off-shore scamsites.

But any law that allows unilateral action? Without even notification? This is a step too far. Forcing search engines to censor in the name of these things is error prone and chilling on free speech.

I live in DC. I'd be interested in pushing some form of a political organization. I think it's time we stand up. Stand up and say, we don't care if you're Republican, Democrat, Communist, Tea Party, whatever. Stand behind this bill and we will do what we can to blow you out of office. Bought and paid for maroons on both sides of the aisle need to quake. We need to erase from their minds the concept that because they 'vote right' on the 'big' issues, they are safe to sell out on these lower profile bits. No way, jerks.

If we could devote half the firepower from these "ip protection" efforts to fixing our federal debt then this country would be running a trillion dollar budget surplus right now.

It's always good to know that I can count on my elected officials to take action on my behalf. Oh wait, I'm not a billion dollar media company. Well.... Nevermind then.....

Are you kidding? Private industry is footing most of that bill here in the first place, not the USA itself. Enforcing COICA/this-thing is dirt cheap, and the cases that come through the courts pay fees and leave money there. The US court system is one of the few things that runs a profit in this country. Shutting down IPs is a hell of a lot cheaper than prosecuting a tax offender or worse, a business.

Also, piracy does have some impact on retail activity. Not to what the MafiAAs suggests by any stretch, but it is an impact, and that means less tax money, and less industry movement/retail flow. Also, shutting down piracy has helped move forward other avenues for media distribution, and created thousands of jobs in the streaming industry and online services, and by extension thousands more jobs, investment, and network expansion to handle it at ISPs.

And the government actions against piracy, they're token measures. Pacify the RIAA, take their money, pass some relatively weak laws that will rarely be successfully used on a voter, and move on. There's a lot of PRESS about it, but its no great time sink for the politicians.

And yet still, all you people fail to get it; COICA is not about piracy, its about cybersecurity, phishing, hackers, and more. It just happens to ALSO be applicable to piracy, and they're letting the RIAA/etc pay for the costs to put it in place. in reality, though it COULD be used against pirates, it has little real effect there, many of those networks run on dynamic IP and crowd sources nodes that a DNS shutdown has little effect on. A phishing web site, taken offline quickly however is a massive issue averted. People don't click on the IP address to their bank, they click on a DNS name in that phishing e-mail. If there's an IP behind the hyperlink, the browser has tools to warn about that, so taking DNS off the table actually stops some real crimes, and being able to do that quickly for zero day attacks and such is a critical tool for national cybersecurity. Gambling sites, black markets, warez sites, hacker IRC servers, botnet heads, and more rely on DNS so they can quickly relocate servers if an ISP pulls a plug or if systems are seized in a raid. Take DNS away and they have to use fixed IPs which are easy to trace to physical locations making law enforcement easier and hacking more risky. This is what COICA is about. Pirates? it's not actually going to stop a torrent network... DNS takedowns have little effect on things not required to have a web page...

So by taxmoney that's lost, youre implying that people who are pirating are just throwing this money in a pot somewhere and not spending it? It absolutely does NOT affect tax revenues, it just shifts where it comes in from.

As I said, the amount the MafiAA lists is bullshit. BUT, it has been shown over and again that stripped of easy and/or safe means to pirate, people do spend SLIGHTLY more on legal media. But again, I was referring to the ancillary industry, job creation, and more from the alternative legal services, bigger ISP pipes (streaming needs more bandwidth than torrenting a song you only download once) subscription offers, and more that is replacing traditional media purchase. There's investment made by reducing piracy. I was not referring to sales tax (of which the government does not even collect).

This isn't just a slippery slope, this is outright state-mandated censorship. Just because they're doing it in the name of private entities doesn't mean they're not breaking the First Amendment. How long because government interests begin to get injected into the "banned lists" and free speech is stifled entirely?

So a judicial order prohibiting credit card processors, ad networks and search engines from rendering service to a foreign website operator that is unlawfully taking copyrighted content and monetizing it for personal game violates the First Amendment? Can you explain please? Do you understand that these orders can only be enforced against foreign websites that are determined to be dedicated to infringing?

There are legitimate needs to protect IP holders. There are legitimate needs to get rid of shady off-shore scamsites.

But any law that allows unilateral action? Without even notification? This is a step too far. Forcing search engines to censor in the name of these things is error prone and chilling on free speech.

I live in DC. I'd be interested in pushing some form of a political organization. I think it's time we stand up. Stand up and say, we don't care if you're Republican, Democrat, Communist, Tea Party, whatever. Stand behind this bill and we will do what we can to blow you out of office. Bought and paid for maroons on both sides of the aisle need to quake. We need to erase from their minds the concept that because they 'vote right' on the 'big' issues, they are safe to sell out on these lower profile bits. No way, jerks.

Unilateral action? a) by definition, it;s not unilkateral, there's a check and balance in place of a) opening a case, b) federal law enforcement data colelction and due process building a case, c) presenting that to a federal court, at which a defense attorney representing the "Doe's" is in fact appointed and present, and D) a judge makes the order legal before it can be enacted.

It's essentially an arrest warrant and a cease and desist. They can;t BE contacted through other legitimate means, they're still most often anonymous, especially when we're dealing with people TRYING to stay hidden likely hackers, phishers, and those running true pirate systems.

This is a pre-court action, like seizing property or accounts BEFORE the trial. Its a long standing part of due process. Stop the damage being done while a trial is conducted. You're innocent until proven guilty, but you're in prison none the less waiting trail.

Also, this is not the END, this is the beginning. If a site believes it was taken out unjustly, they have but to prove that in court (something the government already would have to have proven illegal activity on to eve have gotten the order in the first place). If they do prove injustice, restitution processes do exists. This process is also watchdogged by multiple private and public organizations, including at least the EFF.

Finally, please explain how you plan to have a trial for people you can not find or identify, especially when there is clear evidence (it;s ON THE WEB, in plain sight!), and get a verdict BEFORE acting? Right, a trial to convicty who? They're IN HIDING. We seize what we know exists and hope to shake them loose ion the process. This is a seizure order, NOT a conviction.

And, it ABSOLUTELTY cannot be used against speech. The laws own language makes that explicitly clear! It can onyl be used on site's for which its PRIMARY exisatance falls into certain specific illegal activity areas (cyber terrorism, hacking, phishing, bot nets, central control of pirate distribution systems, etc). It has to be conducting clearly illegal activity, but not only that, it has to have no OTHER reason for being that might be legal. They CANNOT take out news sites, forums, boards, etc. They can not take out legitimate companies trying to sell products or services (even if those services have questionable legality, if thy're not cyber-terrorism related, COICA does not apply).

Also, our government and courts can already prosecute and take down a site today, it just takes longer... Nothing stops the government from bringing a case against a company or individual and seizing servers. This is simply a proactive tool to impact the servers more quickly, intended to be used against botnets and phishing sites to limit or stop their impact, something that can be very time sensitive.

Maybe you should actually read the text of the proposed law before ranting on about with your tin foil hat all crooked.

There are legitimate needs to protect IP holders. There are legitimate needs to get rid of shady off-shore scamsites.

But any law that allows unilateral action? Without even notification? This is a step too far. Forcing search engines to censor in the name of these things is error prone and chilling on free speech.

I live in DC. I'd be interested in pushing some form of a political organization. I think it's time we stand up. Stand up and say, we don't care if you're Republican, Democrat, Communist, Tea Party, whatever. Stand behind this bill and we will do what we can to blow you out of office. Bought and paid for maroons on both sides of the aisle need to quake. We need to erase from their minds the concept that because they 'vote right' on the 'big' issues, they are safe to sell out on these lower profile bits. No way, jerks.

I'm with you on paragraph one. How about an actual idea to back up the noble statement?

The proposed bill has passed a lot of constitutional scrutiny. Are you suggesting that because search engines censor child porn that there's a free speech issue? I hope not. So why would infringing content (as determined by a judge)?

You don't need to start a group, you live in DC so go visit the astroturf groups funded by Google and Yahoo like EFF, Public Knowledge, etc.

Finally, I'm sure those bought and paid for "maroons" on both sides of the aisle will indeed be quaking.

Dedicated infringers will still be able to get copyrighted content without paying for it. But it will cut back on casual infringers.

Phew! Almost had me going there for a minute...

If passed, this legislation would be the end of Google, unless they relocate to an actually free country, due to competition from un-neutered off-shore search engines.I propose a counter-bill. The Federal Uniform Codification of Unamended Bureaucracy is Impossible To Control Hysterical EnactmentS, or the FUCUBITCHES act.

I don't think believing that IP should be protected goes against the grain. Personally, I agree, but the people corrupting our government do not deserve the protection of its laws, especially those laws that result from said corruption. As far as I'm concerned, those people are greater criminals than the people violating their copyrights.

It is time that a MC and Visa alternative purchasing framework was developed for US and other countries. MC and Visa are in the pocket of US "lawmakers", they are just part of the system. The system of payment is such a vital need that this ongoing problem of Visa and MC not being at arms length of lawmakers needs to end. To in my opinion maintain their combined monopoly of payments, they will do anything required. This needs to change for the global economics, and I believe it is the only option as MC and Visa get more entrenched, it will be the only option as other governments will see this need and their needs to have a more open and transparent payment system will conflict with the MC/Visa duopoly.

Where are all of the piracy apologists who decried "Big Content" using the government as a private police force? Here's your chance to celebrate a private right of action that will vest more of the enforcement responsibility with the rights holders.

@Keithy: Paypal is in play too; as is any US-based payment processor. This bill isn't a silver bullet. Dedicated infringers will still be able to get copyrighted content without paying for it. But it will cut back on casual infringers.

Because it's a horrendous overreach that will never pass congress, so it essentially solves nothing. If this did somehow manage to pass congress, it would single-handedly cripple innovation in the United States and, because we've never tried this before (and certainly didn't fail, oh no), pretty much annoy the crap out of the rest of the world by filing lawsuits that are bound to become spurious (and be wholly ignored) in short order.

Here's the root problem: the rest of the world already has all this shit figured out. They have courts to which they can bring cases and appeal cases that are recognized internationally. The U.S. does not recognize those courts (there are a lot of reasons, but war crimes is number one) and thus does not have the ability to make use of them. So, in reality, what U.S. companies really need is for the U.S. to buy into the international courts. But wait, that means they'd be held to the same standards as international companies...hmm...

Yeah, there are a lot of flaws in PROTECT IP. Private right of action isn't one of them, provided there's a high enough bar to hurdle to get a website shut down, otherwise I would expect this to be a new tool in the corporate rivalry games. Essentially, fucking it up for everyone.